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I spent some time looking at Predictwise. It’s a non-money site. They list everything in dollar values but there is actually no money exchanged. And they are getting their ‘polling’ data from “HuffPost’s Pollster”.

So, I’m inclined to discount the sites legitimacy. Predictions sites have a worse record than betting sites.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – if Biden jumps into the race and makes it explicitly clear he’s going to be Obama’s third term he’ll be our next President. Everybody’s distancing themselves from Obama, the GOP is running against Obama, nobody wants to be saddled with Obama’s track record, but the last guy who ran on Obama’s track record got elected. A failure to elect Biden would be nearly as bad a setback for the Left as an Obama defeat in 2012 would have been, winning the election proves to them that they are right about everything and they are going to be fired up for their man. The GOP, on the other hand, well, which one of those guys gives anybody any enthusiasm for voting? Notice that last time around, the Dems ran a turd sandwich for President and they still beat the giant douche the GOP put up. Why is 2016 going to be any different than 2012?

STEVE SMITH is an acquaintance of Matt Welch’s who used to come around the forums and drool over Barack Obama and FDR on occasion. After a bit of research on his blog, it was determined that STEVE SMITH is, in fact, a shaven sasquatch, and as we all know, sasquatches LOVE rape.

A man from Miami Beach is facing charges after impersonating a doctor and inappropriately touching a woman who believed she was being hired as a nursing assistant.

Howard Harlib, 62, was arrested Thursday on charges of battery and practicing medicine without a license.

According to an arrest report, the victim, Antonia Pascal, saw an advertisement for a nursing assistant/home health aside assistant position listed on Beacon Hill Training Center’s community board.

Police said Harlib identified himself to Pascal as Dr. Allen, and told her that she would be paid about $40,000 a year to help care for one of his patients.

Pascal told detectives that Harlib asked her several questions that made her uncomfortable, such as whether she would be uncomfortable if a patient masturbated in front of her or touched her breasts. He also asked if she knew how to take a patient’s temperature rectally.

“There was a stubborn goat refusing to leave the establishment,” RCMP said. “The employees would ask him to leave and walk him outside, but he would just turn around and come back in through the automatic doors.”

RCMP believe the goat was simply cold and decided to sleep in the space.

Store employees said the goat ambled through the parking lot, and took a nap in the drive-through at one point. Store owner Camille Barzeele said employees kept an eye on him.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A convicted felon who accidentally shot himself in the penis was arrested after police say he lied about how the shooting happened

Donald Anthony Watson was admitted to the Avera McKennan emergency room about 1:30 a.m. Sept. 6 for a gunshot wound to his penis, according to an arrest affidavit.

When questioned by police, the 43-year-old said he was shot by “a black guy (who) tried to rob” him while he was taking out the trash at his apartment.

Officers went to Watson’s apartment in the 1500 block of East Nye Street to look for evidence and witnesses to corroborate Watson’s story. No evidence of a shooting was found near the dumpster. A witness told officers he heard screams of pain coming from Watson’s apartment about 1 a.m. that morning.

A search warrant was served on Watson’s house because of the conflicting stories. Officers found what appeared to be bullet fragments on Watson’s bed, court records show. An empty gun case was found. Officers weren’t able to locate the firearm.

Before Watson entered surgery, officers again asked him how he was shot. This time, he told the officer he shot himself while looking at a gun he was trying to buy.

I wonder if this guy now wishes his state had a waiting period (yeah, I know that as a felon he wouldn’t be able to buy a firearm through legal means so the waiting period wouldn’t matter – but anybody stupid enough to shoot himself in the dick is the kind of shipdit who would support waiting periods and in his current condition probably wishes anything had kept that gun away from him)

NEW YORK, Sept. 29 (UPI) — Police in New York City launched a criminal investigation into the death of a newborn baby — umbilical cord still attached — who was found dead after falling several floors from an apartment building.

The newborn girl was found Monday in a concrete courtyard of a building in the Bronx’s University Heights at about 2:40 p.m. The wife of the building’s superintendent discovered the baby while cleaning up the area behind the seven-floor structure.

I just wish we could decide on some consistency surrounding the issue. If she’d gone to a doctor’s office, delivered it, and had a physician snip the spinal cord the whole thing would be on the up and up. Throw it out a window and you’re a monster.

So an 8 year old kid finds a welding mask. He’s walking along playing with the mask when a stranger stops and asks if he needs a ride. The kid is a ways from the part of town he’s headed to so he accepts. After a bit the guy says “Hey kid, do you know what what a pedophile is?” The kid says “Nope.” The guy continues “How about molestation?” The kid says “Sorry, but no.” The guy says “What about blowjobs?” Finally, the kid pipes up “Look, Mister…I’m not really a welder. I just found the mask.”

Speaking on Monday in Brighton, Len McCluskey, the head of Unite, the largest trade union in the U.K., argued that government plans to force striking workers to wear official armbands resembled “the concentration camps of Dachau.”

Meanwhile, fellow delegate to the conference Sioux Blair-Jordan, a Labour activist from Colchester, said that disabled people “might as well walk into the gas chamber” if government plans to alter British human rights legislation went through.

Why does Blair-Jordan hate the disabled? If the legislation enables the disabled to rise from their wheelchairs and walk into the gas chamber then I would say the legislation should be passed immediately.

On a side note – local cops used to park and sleep at the end of an unfinished cul-de-sac (unfinished because of the housing crash in 2008) across the street from me, until they started building there again.

Pfft…they should go by the Northwest Armory at Kedzie and North around 6:45am on a Saturday…back a while ago, you could often find several Chicago PD squad cars lined up right inside Humboldt Park with a many a napping officer – set the alarm for shift change!

The Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board said Monday its administration made the decision after moving from a junior high to middle school grade configuration this school year.

Donnie Holland, acting co-ordinator of school services, said following a professional development session in the spring, officials decided there were better activity options to create a positive school climate that are more age-appropriate.

“It’s not so much that we’re saying dances are evil,” said Holland in a phone interview. “We’re just saying that we’re trying a new philosophy with middle school, so let’s try some new approaches to building school spirit.”

I can’t blame them to be honest. The parents are always freaking out about prom dresses being too short, the dancing being too sexual, the genderqueer kids being discriminated against, or any other conceivable hobgoblin. Who needs the headache. Let somebody outside the school system throw a dance and take on the liability.

We will start by requiring all children to wear these brown shirts. They will then learn to salute the school administrators with a friendly wave that stretches the palm forward and upward at then end of a stiff arm.

“‘I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.’ At the words, ‘to my Flag,’ the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side.”

– The Youth’s Companion, 1892

“Shortly thereafter, the pledge was begun with the right hand over the heart, and after reciting ‘to the Flag,’ the arm was extended toward the Flag, palm-down.

In World War II, the salute too much resembled the Nazi salute, so it was changed to keep the right hand over the heart throughout.”

Civilian participants were to hold their right hands palm down above their hearts: “The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag… should be rendered by standing at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart. When not in uniform men should remove any non-religious headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart. Persons in uniform should remain silent, face the flag, and render the military salute.”

Like other death adders, which are known for being extremely venomous, it is a “sit and wait” predator that lies quietly before striking its prey. Birds, lizards and small mammals are its preferred food.

“These snakes are super-camouflaged — its idea is to look like a rock or a bunch of leaves. Unlike a brown snake they aren’t designed for speed at all, they are quite slow,” Doughty told The Guardian. “They use their tail like a lure, they will dangle it down while it’s hidden until a lizard or something comes close and then it will strike.”

“They are in the top 10 venomous snakes in the world. You definitely have to handle them carefully,” he added.

Like most Australian animals Homo sapiens australienensis has evolved from root sapiens stock to be venomous. Plus they have tough armored skin that provides some protection from the teeth and claws of the rest of the fauna of the continent as well as ultraviolet radiation.

They didn’t discover a new species of snake, they just decided to reclassify an existing single species into two different species. It’s the same crap that allows them to claim species are being wiped out at an unprecedented rate. I supect there are now thousands of species of ants differentiated solely by their habitat, the Jerryskids Backyard ant is an entirely different species from the Jerryskids Frontyard ant because one lives in the front yard and one in the back. If I spread some Amdro in my front yard, I’ve just wiped out an entire species.

Thanks for pointing this out, the story didn’t catch my eye enough to actually click through to it–and if I actually read every full Salon/Huffpo/Vox/etc. link that got posted here, I’d have time to do naught else.

Way back in the Bush years, the original plan for trying them was booted by SCOTUS.

Which helpfully gave a roadmap for trying them constitutionally.

Shortly thereafter, Obama took office, made an abortive run at trying them in civilian courts in the US, never took up the constitutional method of trying them at Gitmo, and is now releasing them back into the wild.

One Republican operative with close ties to Kentucky politics warned against reading too much into Paul’s Senate fundraisers, saying it’s not a sign that Paul is giving up on running for president, but rather a necessity of running for two offices at once.

The operative said it’s a good use of time for Paul to fundraise for the Senate while he’s in Washington. Paul can tap groups that may be friendly to his Senate bid but aren’t inclined to commit to him, or any candidate, while the GOP presidential field remains this large.

Paul, he noted, isn’t going all in yet on fundraising for Senate ? he’s not on the ground in Kentucky fighting for resources with the candidates running for statewide office, where elections for governor on down will be held this November.

Yeah, ideally you select either one or the other, not both (the few states in the US that do not levy a state-level income tax have proportionally higher sales taxes, for example). Even when both exist simultaneously though, taxing consumption is pretty much always preferable to taxing income from a perspective of incentives.

Taxman always takes his pound of flesh, just by slightly different methods. Sales taxes when I was growing up in Alabama were ridiculous – it could range anywhere from 4% to 10%, depending on where you were. There was actually one mall that you would pay different tax rates depending on which side of the mall you were in. I heard stories that there was one store there that straddled the border of the two small towns that saved its customers money by moving the cash register to the other side of the store.

While the sales tax is high there, other taxes (income, property taxes) tend to be lower. So far I’m liking living in Florida – there is no income tax, the property taxes seem to be reasonable, and the sales taxes are not too bad. As far as I can tell, the heaviest taxes are on hotels and rental cars. As a Florida resident, I fully support extracting as much from the locusts that descend on the state every summer…

Entire legal structures were created to prevent African Americans from building economic security through home ownership. Legally-enforced segregation. Restrictive deeds. Redlining. Land contracts. Coming out of the Great Depression, America built a middle class, but systematic discrimination kept most African-American families from being part of it.

State-sanctioned discrimination wasn’t limited to homeownership. The government enforced discrimination in public accommodations, discrimination in schools, discrimination in credit-it was a long and spiteful list.

Turning to today’s racial struggle, Warren credited the civil rights legislation of the 1960s with widely establishing the founding principle of the current protest movement. “The first civil rights battles were hard fought. But they established that Black Lives Matter,” Warren said. “These laws made three powerful declarations: Black lives matter. Black citizens matter. Black families matter,” she argued, crediting her predecessor, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, with helping to shepherd the landmark legislation through Congress.

Yeah, note how she omits her own party’s history of trying to ameliorate these things through public housing, only to see such efforts degrade into slums every. single. time.

One of Truman’s own men blatantly admitted one time that public housing failed because they mistakenly thought that homeownership had a universal effect on uplifting populations–the thought was that if they “owned” their own home, they’d want to be responsible for keeping it maintained and thus build the stable communities that minority and poor white populations had lacked in the past. However, he said, and I’m paraphrasing, “It was believed that giving people these homes would make them responsible, productive citizens. Instead, we gave them the homes and they turned out to be the same rotten people they always were.”

The in loco parentis model of government that Warren and progressives in general advocate never takes the fundamental dysfunction of poor populations into account, naively believes that a Scandanavian government model can be applied to an ethnically and culturally heterogenous population when there’s no record of such a system ever being successful in world history, and never accounts for the limits of scale.

Speaking to Sky News, GMB leader Paul Kenny said: “Our current position with the GMB – we won’t be supporting the scrapping of Trident for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which nobody can come up with how we’re going to deal with the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who rely on that defence industry’s jobs.

“People need to get real – this is not coffee bar politics – this is the real world.”

A senior Unite source said: “Don’t expect us to be on the wrong side of members’ jobs.”

The research by Harvard school of public health found that regularly drinking sugary drinks increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by a quarter (26 per cent), the risk of heart attack or fatal heart disease by a third (35 per cent) and the risk of stroke by a sixth (16 per cent).

The study – the most comprehensive review of evidence of health effects of sugary drinks to date – follows new official UK advice which says adults should restrict their sugar intake to just 30 grams – seven teaspoons – a day.

I got into a tiff with my favorite grouchy Vietnam Vet. I commented on his article in which he argued for the draft.

He argued in another piece that the US should be the world’s policeman, which is odd considering he describes himself as a libertarian.

I posted a reply in which I said I believe strongly in an all-volunteer military and I recently put my money where my mouth is. For some reason, he chose not to allow that comment to appear.

On a side, I have to wonder why a country with nuclear weapons would need a large military anyway. It seems the odds that a country with nuclear weapons is in very little danger of being invaded or conquered.

Because there are levels of engagement between “Total apathy” and “Nuke the bastards”. And if you’re facing asymmetric warfare (on your turf or abroad) a nuke will hit more allies than enemies, so the enemy knows you won’t nuke anybody.

Look, Ahmed, I *know* you don’t like the whole ‘suicide bombing’ thing, but all we need to do is get *one* guy over there with a teeny-little bomb – and they’ll drop a 15 kilo-ton nuke on him – in their own city.

“The negotiators, who had worked around the clock for five days in an effort to bring the crisis to an end before Mr. Carter left office, said that they had no idea whether the Iranians had deliberately dragged out the talks so as to insure that the hostages were not actually in the air until Mr. Reagan was President.”

“Those who have studied the negotiations since – and presumably had the ability to talk to some on the Iranian side – have since concluded that there’s little to no evidence that the incoming president’s foreign policy was a significant factor….

And it’s quite likely, indeed, that the timing of the release was chosen by the Iranians to give the least possible amount of satisfaction and credit to the hated Jimmy Carter, who had given sanction to the Shah during his dying days.”

Those who have studied the negotiations since – and presumably had the ability to talk to some on the Iranian side – have since concluded that there’s little to no evidence that the incoming president’s foreign policy was a significant factor

That’s an opinion that I am going to have to disagree with. There is no way the policy and perceived attitudes of an incoming president would have little effect on such a situation.

“There is no way the policy and perceived attitudes of an incoming president would have little effect on such a situation.”

I agree with you here in general, WTF. I believe that governments which oppose the government running the U.S. will certainly treat a Carly Fiorina administration quite differently than they would a Ben Carson administration, for example.

With regards to the release of our hostages from Iran (a specific case), we have historical information indicating that the Carter Administration tried to secure their release before Carter left office.

Unlike the author whom I quoted in my earlier post, perhaps you and I would see matters differently, since we could envision the Iranians moving slowly to not only spite Carter but appease Reagan.

Ah, I forgot to connect the two. Still, if the only concerns are invasion and conquest, seems like nukes would be more than enough. Switzerland has had 200 years of peace without nukes, but then again, they don’t try to police the world.

Israel had nukes in ’73, everyone knew it, yet Egypt and Syria invaded anyway. Israel then fought them with conventional army rather than commit genocide. Of course, who knows what would have happened if Tel Aviv or Jaffa were threatened (but neither Egypt or Syria really wanted to go that far).

And watching that clip reminds me, Britain created the history’s largest empire on a back of tiny, all-volunteer Army (and a huge, selectively-volunteer Navy), so no, you don’t need draft to world police effectively. Maybe press gangs at most.

When I finally did feel comfortable to post a (faraway and sunglassed) photo on my AM profile, I was bombarded with likes and winks and invitations to view private photo galleries. At first, it was kind of fun. So many men! So many men who could potentially be mine! Then it became overwhelming. The sheer volume diluted the experience, making it more overstimulating than stimulating. I liked it better when I was doing the shopping.

Yet there was still a deeply addictive quality to it all.

One man once asked me if all the Internet attention “gave me high self-esteem.” I can say with confidence that non-specific, voluminous “likes” and “winks” and generic compliments had very little effect on my own self-worth. I wish it were that easy. Interestingly, men kept telling me how “normal” I seemed. This was the closest to flattered that I felt, a form of reassurance that despite this totally inappropriate, amoral and dishonest venture, I was still A-OK at my core. In hindsight, I recognize “normal” as code for “real” ? not a sex worker, not a robot, but a regular woman.

After threatening her, Hoyer returned to his apartment but said that’s when he saw “Mexicans in the trees” outside his apartment who were plotting to jump him. He also imagined more “Mexicans” were in a second neighbor’s apartment trying to get her to open Hoyer’s apartment door so they could rob him, the Herald reports.

This is when Hoyer went to her apartment to “save” her. When he went to kick in her door, he caused his gun to go off. The bullet ricocheted off his hip bone and went into his lower abdomen, coming to rest in his scrotum, authorities told the paper. Police found him walking with the injury from his apartment to his truck.

And that’s why it’s a shame to hear from the outgoing Boehner, defeated and depressed, warning of “false prophets” like Ted Cruz. The actual words Boehner says about the Obamacare shutdown battle indicate how he’s got things turned around. “Over the course of the August recess and September in 2013? my Republican colleagues? they were getting a lot of pressure from home to do this.” Don’t fall into the trap of thinking this is about pressure that comes from Washington, any more than Borders should blame Amazon over their lost customers. It is a case of a complete asymmetry of understanding. Republican Party leadership and the donor class have acquiesced to the idea that a second term president is an uncheckable emperor who can do whatever he wills. They remain frustrated with the significant portion of their base that refuses to go along with this new understanding of the separation of powers.

So Republican leaders say: “Barack Obama is effectively our king so long as Democrats stand with him ? and you must accept this fact.” But still, the conservative base asks: “Why?”

6. I don’t understand why people would want to get rid of pigeons. They don’t bother no one.

7. I just don’t kill anything no more. I used to kill pigeons, rip their heads off, ‘You dirty rat pigeon!’ I don’t even have the heart to kill an animal no more. I just changed my whole life in general.

8. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I’m just ferocious. I want your heart! I want to eat his children! Praise be to Allah!

9. I wish that you guys had children so I could kick them in the fucking head or stomp on their testicles so you could feel my pain because that’s the pain I have waking up every day.

10. I ain’t the same person I was when I bit that guy’s ear off.

11. I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I’ll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts.

12. Do you know what I do sometimes? Put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters.

13. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly for the first time in more than a decade, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Monday for a broad anti-terror coalition aimed at stopping the Islamic State?and in a pointed challenge to President Barack Obama, hinted that this coalition should back the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The team, Putin explained, would be “similar to the anti-Hitler coalition.” Speaking about the Islamic State in lurid terms, he added, “We cannot allow these criminals who have already tasted blood to return back home and continue their evil.”

“Russia stands ready to work with its partners on the basis of consensus,” Putin said. It’s not clear, though, whether he expects the US to be one of these “partners.” According to the Washington Post, Putin has historically used the word “partners” to refer to countries with whom relations are tense.

Seems to me that Putin has the right of this. If intervention is on the menu, probably best not to intervene on behalf of the terrorist faction in this civil war and probably best to let the secular despots of the Middle East rise and fall on their own accord. The west systematically wiping out the secularist regimes across the region has been an unmitigated disaster.

Less than a day after it was first reported, Scalise acknowledged the story was indeed true. He issued a halfhearted apology and claimed he was unaware, at the time, of the organization’s affiliation with the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He was there, he said, merely to speak in opposition to a tax proposal, the Stelly Tax Plan, that was being debated in the Legislature.

I know this story very well, because I am the blogger from Louisiana who broke it wide open. I also know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Steve Scalise was painfully aware of where he was and whom he was addressing. The writing was literally on the wall.

Even though Scalise admitted and apologized for his participation in the meeting, he has yet to be completely honest with the American public. He was not there to speak about the Stelly Tax Plan; at the time, the bill had only been pre-filed, and the debate about it actually kicked off months later.

I remember this bullshit. Basically the organizer of the EURO event had overbooked the room. He was a supporter of the congressman, so he invited him down to speak to some local old folks in the free room. The whole thing was so incredibly minor that the congressman and his staffers couldn’t even remember the time period enough to deny that he’d been there. They literally had to come back a couple days later after sorting through itineraries and emails from the time to figure out what the hell had been going on.

The main part of the ACA is a private health insurance market place (Cigna, Anthem, etc) with an overpriced fed built web front end. It’s not a “free market” but it sure as hell is a regulated privately owned system.

The main part of Barrycare is Medicaid. That is where the majority of new coverage has come from. You certainly don’t get to claim success for the millions you forced out of perfectly good private plans onto mandated “private” plans.

First Steve McIntyre started digging into some financial disclosure forms

Roger Pielke Jr [discovered] that, in addition to his university salary from George Mason University, Jagadish Shukla, the leader of the #RICO20, together with his wife, had received a further $500,000 more in 2014 alone from federal climate grants funnelled through a Shukla-controlled “non-profit” (IGES), yielding total income in 2014 of approximately $750,000. … In addition, the “non-profit” organization had also employed one of Shukla’s children.; and, IGES transferred $100,000 from its climate grants to a second corporation controlled by the Shukla family …, which in turn transferred $100,000 to an educational charity in Shukla’s home town in India,…

There’s still going to have to be a major cultural shift with environmentalist propaganda being pushed from every angle, all the time, and it being the unacknowledged religion of the modern age. Hell, at my high school a decade and a half ago there was a big push that we were all DOOMED, DOOMED, without Kyoto, and the push for like narratives is only more omnipresent now.

On average I get a significantly warmer reception advocating the removal of restrictions on full-auto firearms than when I vocalize even quite reserved skepticism of the Church of Gaia, let alone what I really think. People get really touchy at the slightest hint of dissent.

I lost my two-year-old daughter to a rare and as yet incurable disease. It’s funny how the memory of mind-numbing fear and rat-trapped-in-a-cage desperation lurks just below the surface of a mother’s existence after losing a child. The memory of being unable to do anything to save my child isn’t just a mental exercise. It is a very real and raw sensation that I relive over and over and will my entire life at unpredictable moments. So when I pictured a man like Mr. Shkreli someday holding the key to a terminally ill two-year-old’s only hope of survival, I became literally sick.

It’s easy to vilify this man. His choice to make a 5000 percent return on an old product was obviously pure, unadulterated greed. Only the most na?ve individual or an individual who is totally invested in the ideology of free markets at the expense of humanity would be satisfied with his flimsy excuses. Even the trade group PhRMA has distanced itself from his actions in a public statement…

But this man’s actions put before Americans a case study that should trigger some collective self-examination. This story gives us an opportunity to rethink the principles we as a society operate on that allows a man like Mr. Shkreli to do what he does.

If she’s concerned about not finding a cure for rare diseases she should be mad at the FDA.

“You will know an eternity of fear before this infinite day is over, Dr. Hugeman. I shall lecture you on it! I shall hold a seminar!” Syzygy screamed. His miter board fell of his head as he gestured wildly with his crackling plasma yardstick.

Dr. Warty Hugeman struggled to break the unbreakable student desk he had been tied to with unbreakable bonds while suspended from an unbreakable rope over a pit of writhing ultravipers. He knew the lethality of the ultravipers; he had bred them himself in order to wipe out the royal family of an alternate Earth ruled by superintelligent and sexually depraved chipmunks. He had made a monument out of their shat out bones.

“Do you really expect me to tell you where the timesuit is?” Warty asked, sneering.

“No, Dr. Hugeman. I expect you to die!” Syzygy chortled.

“You stole that from a movie!”

“No I didn’t! I was saying that a billion years before Ian Fleming was even born! Fleming stole it from ME!” Syzygy swung the plasma yardstick at a globe on his desk and it exploded into flames.

Warty strained his muscled bulk once more. “Are these things really unbreakable?” he asked, after the Professor calmed down.

“Completely! I took them from a Pain Brothel in the Dominatrix System!”

“It’s not like that, you oversexed goon! You know I had to get this off of you!” Syzygy shook the turgid Cervix Smasher at Warty accusingly.

“Be careful with that, Professor. It’s very sensitive.” The Professor screamed in disgust and dropped the massive set of weaponized genitals.

Warty strained against the ropes once more. They needed to be weakened. He concentrated and sent a command to his feet and wrists to begin producing acidic sweat. He let his fingertips fall off and used the diamond edges of his fingerbones to saw at the ropes. A thin trickle of explosive prostatic fluid began to run from the connection valve of the Cervix Smasher. His saliva glands initiated production of blinding venom. His canines grew two inches. He loaded a fart of concentrated VX gas into his rectal cannon.

“I’m going to slap you to death with my robocock when I get loose, Professor. I suggest you start running now.” The ropes began to part under the onslaught from his fingerbones. A powerful charge was gathering in his pubic hair. “If you’re fast enough, I might leave some small part of you slightly unfucked.”

Professor Syzygy stared in horror as Warty pulled one foot loose and then the other, the unbreakable ropes parting like rotted silk.

I had this book as a kid that was about human anatomy. The crotch areas of both sexes were blank, like Barbie and Ken’s and it just said “Pubic Area.” I didn’t know that word, so I read it as “Public Area.” Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me.

The Nassau County District Attorney’s Office on New York’s Long Island bars its prosecutors from possessing a handgun, even at home, unless a special exception is made by the Acting District Attorney, Madeline Singas, according to an application for employment.

From the article: “Our practice of asking prosecutors to not possess handguns is to ensure the safety and comfort of staff, victims, and witnesses, and is consistent with other district attorney’s offices in the New York City metropolitan area.”

From the application form “Gun Ownership” section to be signed: I understand that assistant district attorneys are not permitted to apply for a handgun permit nor own or possess a handgun while employed by the Nassau County District Attorney. Any exception to this policy must be in writing and approved by the District Attorney.

-Heard some American reporter interviewing Putin. The guy kissed Putin’s ass. He said “Russia, with its nuclear arsenal, is a force to be reckoned with.” Putin said something like “well, I hope so.”

-Chris Hayes tried to get Fiorina to admit that her description of the Planned Parenthood videos were a lie. He slipped up when he said that what Fiorina described was merely a “re-enactment” or “stock footage” rather than something that had happened recently.

-Jake Tapper tried to corner Carson about his comments on Islam. Tapper gave the usual line about extremists in every religion and asked Carson if he would oppose Christian extremists seeking office. Carson said he opposes a theocracy of any kind. If a Christian candidate ran on subverting the constitution, that’s just as bad.

-Chris Hayes trashed Trump’s tax plan. He talked about the rate cuts for the wealthy but left out the part where the plan also exempts everyone earning less than $25k/yr from income tax.

Make no mistake: I have not left the Republican Party. It left me. I cannot tolerate a political party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin or their economic status. I will not be a member of a Party in which hate speech elevates candidates for higher office rather than disqualifying them. I cannot place my name on the ballot for a political party that is proud to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers over the vain attempt to repeal a law that would provide health care to millions of people throughout our country.

How the fuck did you consider yourself a Republican in the first place?

I knew a guy who told me that he was always a staunch conservative/Republican until the GOP got involved in the abortion wars. This caused him to switch to the liberals/Democrats. Which raised the obvious (but unasked) question: so why, exactly, where you a Republican if you junked everything else when you switched parties?

LiAZ-677 was former Soviet Union’s most famous bus. It ran on all urban roads all over the union for more than 30 years, and gained fans all over the nation. The bus was manufactured by Likinskiy Avtobusnyi Zavod, Russian for “Likino Bus Plant”, or LiAZ in short ? a bus manufacturing company based on Likino-Dulyovo, the town where the monument is located.

Despite its ubiquity and popularity, LiAZ-677 was not a comfortable bus, nor was it efficient. Its engine had an enormous appetite for gasoline, consuming 35 liters of petrol per hundred kilometers. Because of design flaw in the passenger compartment heating system, the interior of the bus would fill with fumes. Drivers complained about noise in the driver’s seat, and during the summer months the engine would run excessively hot. The transmission also made a characteristically loud noise similar to the “sound of empty bottles”. But it had a large capacity of 110 passengers which was useful during rush hours. One Reddit user describes his experiences of travelling on LiAZ-677 as squeezing himself “with a hundred other poor souls into this crowded coffin.”

“We should rally and expand efforts that support survivors of ISIS brutality, including women and girls who have returned from captivity. Perpetrators should pay a price for their crimes, not survivors.”

That would require him understanding the other side. Pro-choice are really good at ignoring the talks about if a fetus has right to life and instead screaming their opponents want to oppress women.

It’s going to hurt them severely down the road. I’ve gone from no clue what to think to leaning towards pro-life, just because pro-life is the only side I hear arguing for why their opinion on when a fetus has a right to live is the correct one. Hell, their the only ones I hear arguing science and morality at all. It makes for a rather one sided debate.

I’m sure there are, but I’m not hearing them. It’s not a lack of exposure either. I know two folks who volunteer for Planned Parenthood. It may just be a social pressure thing. The circles I hear the most from are really pro-choice, so any idiot feels safe voicing their support, but those who are pro-life are scared of being ostracized, so they only speak up when they have a really good point in their favor.

a woman should not be forced to nourish and support a fetus with her own body for several months, and that it basically amounts to forced life support

That’s it, in a nutshell. And its not a bad start. The responses to it, which are rarely dealt with as far as I can tell, include the following:

(1) The fetus is a person, and on balance your obligation to provide forced life support does not weigh heavier on the scales than a person’s right to life. There is a very interesting argument to be had about this proposition as it might apply in other situations.

(2) Absent rape, the woman is pregnant because she took the risk of being pregnant, and carrying the fetus to term is the foreseeable consequence of that risk.

(3) Why is it that a woman can disclaim responsibility for a pregnancy, but a man cannot?

Interesting. The circles I hear most from are really pro-life. I live in Montana, and your example of pro-choicers being more outspoken than pro-lifers (who are afraid of being ostracized) is exactly the opposite of what I experience here.

So… I guess you could say the pro-choice folks around here only speak up when they have a really good point in their favor, also.

There’s also the “fuck you dad” aspect of things like Tacos, Beer and Abortions, where it certainly seems like the strong secondary goal is offending the hell out of people they don’t like instead of offering any sort of philosophical objection on the issue of where human life and thus rights begin.

The proper answer is that a fetus in very early stages of development probably can’t be considered a human being, but that some time before birth it becomes developed enough that it can be considered a human being.

That’s actually the argument you hear from most people who are ‘pro-life.’ Very few people are actually against all abortion. The difference between the two sides is actually that most people who self-identify as pro-life are in favor of some legal abortion, whereas the real fanatics are the pro-choicers who think you should be allowed to have an abortion of choice in the 26th week of a pregnancy, which basically amounts to out and out infanticide.

The difference between the two sides is actually that most people who self-identify as pro-life are in favor of some legal abortion, whereas the real fanatics are the pro-choicers who think you should be allowed to have an abortion of choice in the 26th week of a pregnancy, which basically amounts to out and out infanticide.

Leaving aside the “real fanatics” issue, it seems to me much more like the difference between the sides is in emphasis. There are a ton of people who would also call themselves “pro-choice” who would be comfortable with the same kind of late-term ban that moderate pro-lifers want, but the emphasis is on, “It’s okay to have an abortion, and that’s an important choice to have” vs. “It’s wrong to have an abortion, but we have to let some people do it sometimes.”

And frankly both sides are represented in public advocacy by fanatics. You don’t see any of the R candidates up on stage saying “abortion until 20 weeks is a fine pro-life position.”

I have found that many that far out on the spectrum are also lefties who don’t subscribe to the notion of inherent rights at all. Not only do they have no problem murdering infants, they have no problem murdering you for a good cause.

Mom’s pro-choice and volunteers at Planned Parenthood. Best friend’s mom from high school used to work at an abortion clinic. Best friend from high school incredibly pro-choice.

Dragged to a pro-abortion speaker event in high school by both moms. Thought it seemed a little one sided and openly wondered what the other side had to say (highly active in debate type clubs at the time, wasn’t out of character for any issue). Got yelled at by friend’s mom and told that the other side was ‘religious nuts’ who just wanted to ‘oppress women’ and that they weren’t worth listening to.

And that’s kind of a problem. When you build your case on a highly principled general proposition like that, it works better if you apply it across the board. Too many pro-choicers don’t.

To be clear, I land on no abortion after viability (except to save the life of the mother). You, as a pregnant woman, still have agency, which means you have responsibility for things like (a) getting pregnant due to voluntary sex and (b) noticing you are pregnant within 5 months. Your freedom is always constrained by your responsibilities in this world.

“My body, my choice” is a slogan that ignores the debate. It ignore the scientific and moral debate of when in human development rights begin to exist. It completely fails to address why the aggressors right to bodily autonomy outweighs the non-aggressors right to life. It also fails to account for actions taken by one party that confer responsibility for the predicament of the other party who by their very nature cannot have made any conscious decision or action that resulted in their situation, and if this responsibility would also confer privileges as compensation for the non-responsible party that would not otherwise exist.

It doesn’t ignore the debate, it just begs the question, so it’s unpersuasive except to the already converted. There’s certain premises that are axiomatic for each side on the abortion issue. Each rejects the other’s fundamental premise, which is why there is no real debate to be had.

PM, what is the pro-choice side’s premise then? If it is that a fetus doesn’t have a right to life, then that matches up perfectly with the debate the pro-life side wants to have about if they do or do not. It doesn’t seem to be literally bodily autonomy considering the vast amounts of things that slogan doesn’t get applied to. Is it something like sexual freedom free from bad results is good?

It completely fails to address why the aggressors right to bodily autonomy outweighs the non-aggressors right to life. It also fails to account for actions taken by one party that confer responsibility for the predicament of the other party who by their very nature cannot have made any conscious decision or action that resulted in their situation, and if this responsibility would also confer privileges as compensation for the non-responsible party that would not otherwise exist.

Your car hits a slippery patch. You lose control knocking me unconscious onto your property (your actions cause my predicament, even though there was no intent). I am now trespassing. Normally you have the right to enforce your right to private property even at the expense of my right to life. Do you have the right to do so in this situation, or does the NAP mean you need to wait for me to wake up and have me consciously choose to violate your rights before you can kill me? Instead of waiting for me to wake up can you roll my unconscious body off your property and onto the busy street with the express purpose of having me run over and killed? Do any of these hypotheticals change if instead of you being the one to knock me unconscious on your property its a guy who was robbing you that does it?

It completely fails to address why the aggressors right to bodily autonomy outweighs the non-aggressors right to life.

You are presupposing who is the aggressor.

It also fails to account for actions taken by one party that confer responsibility for the predicament of the other party who by their very nature cannot have made any conscious decision or action that resulted in their situation, and if this responsibility would also confer privileges as compensation for the non-responsible party that would not otherwise exist.

Again, for a pro-choice person who does not place much moral weight on the existence of a fetus, this just…doesn’t matter. Just as you admit, the fetus has never indicated any remote preference for being alive, having not yet achieved consciousness. So the whole analogy with an unconscious trespasser breaks down for people who assume preferences extend through consciousness and the lack of it, but who don’t believe fetuses have expressed any preferences.

Indeed, the assumptions you are making are just…huge. The idea that someone who never had an intention to live, never expressed a preference to live, and in fact never consented to live, somehow has a “right to life” is a bit bizarre. Why does the fetus not instead have a “right not to be born”? They are, in many ways, equivalent positions. The idea that life, as the default, is what ought to happen, is just the naturalistic fallacy.

“You are presupposing who is the aggressor.” Aggression is a conscious action. The fetus made no conscious action to cause it’s predicament. The woman on the other hand makes a conscious action when she chooses to abort it. There is no presupposing, even if the fetus is determined to have no rights, the woman will be the aggressor in this situation.

“Again, for a pro-choice person who does not place much moral weight on the existence of a fetus, this just…doesn’t matter.” So what you are saying is that “My body, my choice” is just a slogan that ignores the real debate, as your argument is not body autonomy but the lack of rights of the fetus. Remember no one cares if you get a tumor cut out, even if you got it from years of smoking cigarettes.

Woman trumps fetus. Personhood doesn’t even necessarily come into play, depending on who you’re talking to, because even if the fetus does attain personhood at some point prior to birth, the autonomy (or even just personal preference) of the mother takes higher priority. In this framework, definitionally a fetus cannot have co-equal rights with the mother, so there is no moral ambiguity about destroying it.

It doesn’t ignore the debate, it just begs the question, so it’s unpersuasive except to the already converted. There’s certain premises that are axiomatic for each side on the abortion issue. Each rejects the other’s fundamental premise, which is why there is no real debate to be had.

So what is the moral argument. That bodily autonomy trumps all? Because that argument means we can’t put people in prison for stealing or restrain someone before they knife somebody else. If there are caveats to bodily autonomy, my original point stands that that slogan ignores the debate at hand. The debate is not based around if we have the right to do with our body as we please as long as we harm no one else, but rather two debates on if their is someone else to harm in this situation and if there is. If that person’s right to life outweighs bodily autonomy when aggression and responsibility between the two parties are solely the domain of the woman.

No, that your own bodily autonomy, as a woman, trumps that of a child that depends on you entirely and that would only ever be born because you wanted it to.

Because that argument means we can’t put people in prison for stealing or restrain someone before they knife somebody else.

Not necessarily. First of all, pro-choice people have plenty of different political philosophies overall, so they might have various justifications for imprisonment or other punishments. But one argument would be that you can only lose your rights as punishment for violating someone else’s. Unless you consider being pregnant to be a rights violation, the same idea wouldn’t apply (this is the “pregnancy as punishment for sex” issue). And if you did consider it a rights violation, whose rights would be violated–if the answer is “the fetus’s,” you could argue that abortion was actually morally required.

Besides, pregnancy is highly unusual in the fact that the other entity resides completely inside the pregnant woman and relies on her for 100% of its functions, so analogies to something like stealing are going to lack significant elements for many people.

My state is full of pro-life people who really wouldn’t want a woman to have an abortion at any time, ever. Seriously, Plan B isn’t even alright to them. And you can bet your ass that their opinions stem largely from their religion.

I drive by two anti-abortion billboards on the short 10 mile drive to work every day.

There’s nuts on both sides, Illocust, even if you only want to acknowledge half of them.

Anecdotes are acceptable when being accused of never being exposed to pro-choicers. I never claimed there weren’t nuts on both side. That would be a silly position as there are nuts on every side of every debate ever that involved more than a hundred people.

My earlier post’s point still stands, though. I’m not hearing anything from the pro-choice side that’s engaging the real debate, and if they don’t fix that it’s going to hurt them severely in the long run.

Pretty much all of the argumentation I ever hear from abortion advocates is utilitarian in nature. E.g., “But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby;” or “If we don’t provide abortions, we’ll have to pay more for welfare;” or “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

But eating beef, as I’ll explain, has come to be seen, rightly, in certain enviro circles, as the new SUV — a hopelessly selfish, American indulgence; a middle finger to the planet. It’s not the main driver of global warming — that’s burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat and transportation — but it does contribute significantly.

Beef consumption in the UK took a massive hit with the multiple BSE outbreaks of the 80’s.

When you take into account the relative costs, it was certainly far less affordable than it is in the US too – doing some research online, sirloin looks to be about $9/lb on special at places like Asda, which probably means normal retail runs something like $10-11/lb at a local (small) store, while chicken breast runs about 1/3 of that price.

I read about an interesting experiment where volunteers were assigned to learn the made-up names of some alien fruit by sound only. They experimenters deliberately created confusing names; for example, the word for “red fruit” had nothing in common with the word for “blue fruit”. At the end of the test, they asked the subjects to write down what they thought the names were. Those names then became what the next group of subjects had to learn. After a couple of iterations, the names became shorter and systematic. It was sort of like the Broken Telephone game in reverse.

The conclusion was that people are pretty good at making sense of nonsense.

“The Obama-Kanye political-music revue coming to S.F.’s Warfield” […] “West is billed as a performer for the Democratic donors. He and his wife, Kim Kardashian, became engaged in San Francisco during a lavish surprise party in 2013 at AT&T Park, complete with a 50-piece orchestra, roman candles, and an entire film crew from “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/…..535912.php

Parallel universe RMS Titanic attacked by monstrous giant squid-like being in the Pacific Ocean, and dragged to the ocean floor (coincidentally plucking the alternate-universe Kate Winslet from the bow of the ship as the vessel descends). Archaeologist-Escapologist Bruce Willis leads intrepid mission to salvage bars of unobtanium (vital for construction of anti-zombie weapons pioneered by slave scientists working in a secret research factory) secreted in the wreck, but … unexpectedly … the hero finds that the ship is guarded by a hitherto unknown species of intelligent humanoid, cthonic dwellers.

Plot twist – the dwellers are ZOMBIES, and hence, Willis has all the necessary components to build an undead-proof, unobtanium bathysphere to effect his (ridiculously unlikely) escape,

Source: UBS “Prices and earnings 2015” report. Average annual working hours were calculated by tallying the number of hours worked per day, and the number of days worked per week. Vacation and legal holiday time were deducted to reach the final figures.

I thought it was interesting. I was reminded, while looking through the slideshow, of nationalist buffoons that spout off “Americans are the hardest working people in the world!” or some variation of that.

‘I think even if you think you can separate yourself from the kind of verbal violence that’s being directed at you, that it creates some really kind of cancerous stuff inside you, even if you think, “Oh I can read like 10 mentions that say I should be stoned to death.” That’s verbal abuse. Those aren’t words you’d accept in an interpersonal relationship. [?] For me, personally, it was safer to stop.’

Was listening to Crazy Socon radio the other day. It was open phones and some guy called in with a suggestion to bring peace to the Middle East. He said they should draft young men from the migrants, train them, arm them, and send them out as a foreign legion to fight on behalf of the US. He also wanted to make war on Assad, ISIS, and Iran all at once.